Listeners

MaxwellCoffeeCat Jun 19, 2020

7.5

ANIME LOTTERY GAME SPRING 2020 (This is my third time writing this review because I keep accidentally deleting everything, so third times the charm!) Listeners is a show that started off very weak but ended fairly strong.  The biggest downfall of Listeners, was how much hype that it had received before episode 1, because it was advertised, really well, and the concept sounded very exciting. This anime just wasn’t able to reach these high expectations, and so many people dropped it very early. The major problem that people had with the show was the awful eye sickening mixture of 3D and 2D animation, that I’m sure any long time anime fan knows way too well. This was a problem that did get fixed overtime, and towards the end of the series, it no longer burned your eyes out, and it actually looked well done at times. That’s one thing I will mention a lot through this review, improvement, because this anime, in the short amount of time it aired, did show a lot of improvement throughout its course, which is one of its charms.  I am a big animation nerd. I love to animate, and I love to watch animations. This anime didn’t have any Sakuga, or anything interesting animation-wise, but the art style was well crafted. I really enjoyed the aesthetics of the background art, and the animation style of the EDs.  That’s right, I said EDs. Every single episode had their own ED, and they were all pretty well done. (My favourite one is episode 10’s ED!). The soundtrack was pretty well done for the budget they seem to have had, and it fitted the show nicely. Talking about music, this show’s whole theme is music, in a world, where music doesn’t exist anymore, which was an actually pretty interesting concept, that I think they portrayed pretty well. There are a lot of music culture references as well. One of the OST albums is a Beatles parody. The world-building and character-building is really really well done, but I felt that the writing was trying too hard to show off as much of this world that they could, without seeming to impact the story (though in the end, it DID impact the story, but it just felt way too episodic in the beginning). The main characters travel to different towns, and every town has their own distinct feel, and their own cast of characters, and as someone who takes a great interest in world building, I think that they honestly did a pretty good job.  Now comes to me advertising the Anime Lottery Game, because I’m going to be honest, if it wasn’t for the game, I would have dropped this anime really early on, because I found parts of it really really painful to watch, but I am glad that I was forced to stick through it, because I honestly really really enjoyed the last couple of episodes, and I wouldn’t have been able to experience that otherwise.  Would I recommend this anime to a new anime fan? No, because it’s not a show that’s going to draw you into the vast world of anime, but I would recommend it to a more seasoned fan, who can handle being patient enough with some really dry episodes, and wait for the way better-done ones. I also would recommend this to anyone who just really likes musical references, because this show is full of them. 

Aniosophy Nov 6, 2020

6

-(Here are my final thoughts/RANT on this series, TL;DR - It is trash)Wow, so, have you guys ever had that experience where you go look at an anime’s page and think ”wow that’s a really low score, but the show couldn’t actually be that bad, right?” so you give it a shot, and after the first 2 or 3 episodes, you think “ok, this is pretty bad, but it’s not as bad as the rating implied” but then you get to a point in the series and you realize “HOLY FUCKING SHIT, no, this really is as bad as the rating implied, I didn’t think it could get worse, but somehow it has” that summarizes my experience with this show in a nutshell. This is one of the first times in a long time where I actually regret watching an anime, because I wasted literally hours of my life consuming this GARBAGE.-Like I GENUINELY do not understand HOW can an anime be this bad, this is made by the same studio that has brought us so many amazing anime, and the main scriptwriter for this series is the exact same guy who has written more than a dozen episodes of Eureka Seven, so how, HOW can this anime be so bad with the talent that is behind it, I genuinely do not know. I stepped into this expecting it to be at least better than Gleipnir, but I somehow walked away with this now being the worst anime I have completed this year.-On the bright side the music, the animation, and the art style for the series are all top-notch and if they ever release creditless versions of all of the EDs they will probably make for great material to make amazing AMVs out of. So while in concept the theory for this show sounds interesting, the execution is so terrible that you are honestly amazed that it could be this bad. At first, you get at least some enjoyment out of watching a trainwreck happen, but at a point in this series it just doesn’t matter anymore, and you just want to jump ship just like the show already done since episode one, but you’re already 3/4 of the way through, so you can’t leave it unfinished, so now you just have to buckle down and watch this garbage.-Anyways my rate/review it’s over, I’ve said all I want to say, if you want to talk about it go for it. So if I had to rate this series I guess I would give it a rating I have not given in more then 2 years, a 60/100, because the plot is so incoherent and honestly rushed that I would need to look at the reactions for every episode to even get a semblance of what the fuck is going on. So yeah, do yourself a favor and don’t watch this anime🙏🙏-P.S. in case you are wondering, the only “good” episode in this series is episode 7, and that is because it is almost completely separate from the main plot, which is why it actually works.

krofire Jul 21, 2023

6

Mappa’s 2020 surreal fantasy promises far more than it delivers. It is like some bizarre mash-up combination of “FLCL” and “Takt Op Destiny” (also Mappa in 2021) with Gundam-style mechas thrown in for good measure. And, no, that isn’t meant to be a compliment. There is no point explaining the plot as I never understood what-on-earth was going on most of the time. It is set in some kind of post-apocalyptic future fantasy world where human civilisation has been torn apart by the sudden appearance of shadowy monsters – the “Earless”. The only defence (as you would expect in a daffy anime fantasy) are giant combat robots piloted by “Players”. Players are modelled on famous rock and pop stars like Kurt Cobain and Prince. The different human cultures are modelled around music genres like punk, grunge, country or soul. The enormous combat bots appear magically from pieces of “equipment” that appear to be guitar amplifiers. There is an electronics motif that runs through the visuals depicting transistors and vacuum tubes. Self-declared “nobody” Echo is a young lad working trash heaps during the day and building his own mecha at night. One day he digs up a Player he calls “Mu” and takes her home. She has no memory of who she is but she has an enormous jack socket in her side – the hallmark of a Player. They plug the “equipment” into that socket and the amplifier magically transforms into the combat bot. Off they go to save the world. Or something. At this point I think I lost the will to live. I manage to drag my sorry arse through all 12 episodes in a state of perpetual incomprehension at the plot. There is always plenty of action but none of it makes any sense at all. It appears to be lots of really “cool” retro stuff thrown together in the hope that if you make enough references to BritPop greats like The Beatles, The Who, Oasis or the Sex Pistols then everyone will adore the show. Sure, the dialogue is dripping with cool song lyrics and all the place names are something famous from the geography of rock’n’roll but it just doesn’t work. It is a car crash. It is truly awful. The only nice touch was the way that each ending title was unique with its own song that is then not repeated. Sadly, the music and score is quite forgettable. For fun you can trip over to the Wikipedia page for this show and read through the story’s references to real world pop music. I did spot a lot of these but a few escaped me. Example: characters “Tommy Walker and Sally Simpson are named after 'characters' in The Who's 1969 rock-opera album Tommy.” It is THAT sort of show. If you love classic rock music from the 1970s, 80s and 90s then you will have a ball at these sort of references. (I am not sure the dearly departed reference to Vivienne Westwood was that complimentary though.) I couldn’t bring myself to hate “Listeners”. It isn’t hateful just an abomination. It lacks substance and is just cringeworthy. The core idea is sound but the execution is utter rubbish. Terribly disappointing.